Bird survives rough ride through Hurricane Irene

Staff at The Center for Conservation Biology say it looks as if Chinquapin made it through the storm and is okay. "We have had several locations that put the bird on that island and the collective locations and sensor data suggest the bird is fine. After that hard flight it will likely stage within this site for days before completing its migration to the northern coast of South America," says Watts. The Center, based in Virginia, is in the middle of Irene right now and so won't be able to give further updates until Sunday, "if we have power," he says.

Friday update: Chinquapin appears to be alive and down safe on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. The data comes from just a single satellite fix, received at 4:20 EDT on Friday, so the researchers are waiting for another signal Saturday to be able to confirm, but the news appears to be good.

Our original post:

Researchers in Virginia are pulling for a small shorebird that stands just a foot and a half high who seems to have survived flying through the most dangerous segment of Hurricane Irene Wednesday on its way to winter grounds in South America.

The whimbrel left the far north of Canada on Saturday, flew down across New England, then out over the open ocean and appears to have encountered the outer bands of Hurricane Irene on Tuesday.

He's part of a tracking program to understand the migratory path of the whimbrels and carries a tiny radio transmitter that's been allowing researchers to follow his path.

His forward progress was impressive, says Bryan Watts, director of The College of William & Mary's Center for Conservation Biology. "When he was in the outer bands of the storm he was flying at 30 miles per hour."

Whimbrels have been clocked at 40 to 50 miles per hour in clear weather.

The bird was named Chinquapin by the scientists who tagged it. Pronounced 'chink-a-pin,' it's the name of a shrub in Georgia.

Chinquapin flew through the dangerous northeast quadrant of the storm during the day on Wednesday

Whimbrels are "capable of really amazing migration flights" of up to 3,500 miles without a rest," Watts says. Chinquapin had already been flying for four days straight without stopping when he ran into Irene.

"It's sort of bad to hit a big storm at the end of a flight that long."

The scientists think Chinquapin found his way to some of the islands in the Caribbean to rest. "We think he's going to make it through the storm," Watts said.

What's truly surprising to Watts is that Chinquapin knew where to turn to find an island out in the middle of the ocean. "They seem to have this amazing ability to know exactly where they are at any time. We've had birds go 1,000 to 1,500 miles off shore of Bermuda and still be able to navigate effectively," he says.

The transmitter Chinquapin carries weighs about a third of an ounce. It sends a signal to a satellite allowing scientists to triangulate the bird's position. The transmitter is attached with a leg loop harness and sits on the bird's lower back.

The researchers expect to receive the next update on Chinquapin's location Friday morning.

Chinquapin is probably about three years old. The scientists don't even know how long whimbrels usually live but they suspect it's about ten years, so Chinquapin is most likely in his prime.

Whimbrels made an extremely long migration between James Bay in the Canadian Arctic in the summer and Brazil and Suriname in the winter where they breed. They often stop along the tidal creeks and marshes of Virginia's Eastern Shore to gorge on fiddler crabs before continuing their flight down south.

One of the goals of the research project is to understand how migratory birds navigate and survive storm systems. The Caribbean Basin is a major flyway for many bird species moving between feeding and breeding grounds in North America and South America. Their migration coincides with the period of highest hurricane formation. Changing climate patterns could be affecting storm frequency, intensity, or distribution, all of which could have implications for timing and routes of these long-range fliers.

The tracking project is a collaborative effort between the Center for Conservation Biology, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program and Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. You can see other tracked flights here.

To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

USA TODAY's Science team

Visit Science Fair for your daily dose of scientific news, from dinosaurs to distant galaxies. Science Fair is written by science reporters Dan Vergano and Elizabeth Weise and weather reporter Doyle Rice. Their subjects are often controversial -- and always fascinating -- be they stem-cell research, slime mold, or underground slush on Mars.
More about the team